working model

Compiled with AI assistance and selectively reviewed. Please consult the cited passages; the books remain the authoritative source. About this companion

Editorial synthesis · provisional

Definition

A working model is a present organization of expectations about relevant conditions that guides what an organism does now. In AB's predictive-brain account it forecasts sensory input and is corrected by mismatch. Its broader anticipatory use need not be conscious or exclusively neural. RB2 develops both coping-oriented neural models and Rosen's organizational models; future-oriented survival alone does not establish modeling.

Explanation

AB first places the working model within neural prediction: the brain expects what the senses should report next, and discrepancies correct the expectation. Yet the model is not a cold inner picture. It is expressed in bodily readiness and coping, with action sometimes changing sensory conditions rather than revising the forecast. RB2 similarly describes neural models as poised for use rather than neutral inner descriptions.

The broader use concerns anticipatory organization. AB's Rosen discussion explains present readiness through a model of future-relevant conditions, not a force arriving backward from tomorrow. RB2 describes predictive models as organizational relations that may take embodied forms rather than explicit representations. This does not license an inference from survival to modeling: AB explicitly requires the model's operation to be established in each case and separates self-maintenance from anticipation.

Fallibility belongs to the account. The missing stair and the bee orchid expose expectations that fail. Such failure shows a model's limits, not whether events could have happened otherwise. A working model therefore concerns practical orientation and corrigibility, not a guarantee of foresight or a metaphysical verdict about the future.

Scope and attribution

AB and RB2 own the supported neural and organizational uses. The generic forms model and models are variants only in these local passages. PB's AI and formal models, RB1's scientific models and RB3's general comparative modeling are not globally aliased to working model. The broader organizational sense prevents confinement to neural prediction alone.

AB — The Actual Book

Working model first names the brain's revisable expectation of sensory conditions, then extends to present organizational readiness for future-relevant conditions. AB insists that a model must be established case by case; survival, self-maintenance and conscious foresight are not interchangeable with this capacity. Error does not adjudicate determinism.

Occurrence locators: 92, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103; Notes: 242.

RB2 — The Real Book, Volume II: Becoming Is Being

RB2 develops neural models as coping-oriented rather than neutral inner descriptions and presents Rosen's predictive models as organizational relations, possibly embodied rather than explicitly representational. Its as-if warning prevents a formal description of self-maintenance from automatically establishing literal inference.

Occurrence locators: 6, 7, 74, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 119, 120, 121, 122, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 135, 136, 238.

Background used in the editorial explanation

Named theories and mechanisms are distinguished from neighboring background, homonyms and the author’s own synthesis. Reproduced AI passages retain their separate voice.